The average age of university presidents and members of Congress in the USA is in the 70s. At the risk of sounding callous can we fix our gerontoctratic system and then fix aging?
I picked this up from Ageless by Andrew Steele, a highly recommended and very current overview of the field of aging research.
That group will be composed of the insane/irrational, those who value power at extremes, those who value improving the world over their own lives, and those who have lived long enough that they're ready to move on. The last two categories are great candidates for empowerment, but one is rare and grows rarer, and the other doesn't show up for upwards of centuries. Until then you mostly get the first two, which suck. Eventually, I think, we burn through everyone willing to make the trade-off and we're left with no power centralization.
Unless you mean they only face death for the duration that they are in power, as an enforcement of term limits. I don't think that is materially different from other enforcement of term limits- if a dictator is able to compromise the military, they can probably also compromise whoever has the power to stop their impending death.
It's hilarious to me how shortsighted this whole thing is, if immortal dictators rule humanity indefinitely, how long do you think they'll let you live?
At the country-level scale, that certainly sounds better than everyone aging and dying.
But what would individuals do on a smaller scale? Would this also incentive a lot more violent death among the rest of the population too, to change things up in a world where probably everyone is their own long-lived dictator of some little domain they carved out. Sure, this would be illegal, but you can only catch and prosecute so much crime; what if it becomes unmanageable? Would people create unnatural death to serve the role natural death causes today? I think so. But I think this could still be potentially "better" than today in some measure - you're comparatively healthy and pain-free before your demise, instead of a slow painful decades-long decline.
I kind of like somthing along the same lines as the idea intended in Altered Carbon - everyone gets 100 years of generally healthy life, but then everyone dies at 100. Not realistic at all, but seems highly equitable. Any artificial constraints will be evaded or manipulated at some point, even in the name of what's best for humanity (ie what if Davinci or Einstien were still alive; eventually the people in power would say I'm president, so presidents should live forever too, etc).
Regardless, the bigger issue would be overpopulation.
OK. Do you want to die? I don't want to die.
Life is already inequitable as it is. The rich live a little bit longer. The pleb dies short and miserable life.
At the very least, everyone should be able to live as long as they like.
Any artificial constraints will be evaded or manipulated at some point, even in the name of what's best for humanity (ie what if Davinci or Einstien were still alive; eventually the people in power would say I'm president, so presidents should live forever too, etc).
There's also no absolute law of politics that dictators rule forever or indefinitely if they also happen to be immortal.
Regardless, the bigger issue would be overpopulation.
No, the problem is ecological disaster.
There's so much energy coming from the sun that humanity can't even begin to harvest a fraction of it, but we cannot scale to the sun because doing so will poison the Earth.
Someday, yes.
"Life is already inequitable as it is."
Which is why my statement was commenting on the equitable nature of lifespan in the fictional system.
"At the very least, everyone should be able to live as long as they like."
How do you propose to achieve this? Specifically, how would resource availability/consumption and indignant support systems be able to support it?
"There's also no absolute law of politics that dictators rule forever or indefinitely if they also happen to be immortal."
Nobody suggested what you are saying.
"No, the problem is ecological disaster."
For which increasing population would greatly contribute. Population is a major driver of consumption and there's no evidence that we can even support our current population sustainably. Your comment about scaling seems to be implicity acknowledge this.
It turns out that the way out brains crystallize as we age and make us better at teaching but worse at changing our minds means our ideal lifespan is not very different than the ones we have. I know individuals can work very hard to avoid this outcome but most people don't.
Natural selection doesn't act upon humans for the sake of humanity, nor did it ever asked what humans want or need.
It turns out that the way out brains crystallize as we age and make us better at teaching but worse at changing our minds means our ideal lifespan is not very different than the ones we have. I know individuals can work very hard to avoid this outcome but most people don't.
Citation? I would argue that adults are better at learning languages, because we have the benefit of hindsight, experience, and reasoning.
Whereas children are merely subjected to immerse learning environment from which to acquire languages pretty much every waking hours of their life.
Also, they are the ones who are supposed to fix that problem.
Regards compounding interest, the economic markets have a basis in reality and so can't keep compounding forever.
Also even if it does compound forever, your trifling savings compounded for 100 years means very little compared to all the elder around you who have also compounded their much larger wealth(having compounded across previous centuries too) across that time. Which means you will still be significantly outbid by most of the customer base for anything you could want.
I agree. But unfortunately my understanding of history suggests that cultural and political change is reactionary, not forward thinking. I'd love it if it was forward thinking but I'm not hopeful that this time it'll be different. But if I'm right (and I think most people will agree) then there's no real point to this aspect of the argument because it's not something we can solve.
> Regards compounding interest, the economic markets have a basis in reality and so can't keep compounding forever.
Do you have evidence of this? This is essentially what generational wealth is.
> your trifling savings compounded for 100 years means very little compared to all the elder around you who have also compounded their much larger wealth
I have a bit of a controversial opinion on this (though I'm not sure why). I don't think it is about how far the ladder goes up, I'm more concerned with where the lowest rung is. If moving the lowest rung up requires shortening the ladder, so be it. But if it doesn't, so be it. If you can have a house, food, healthcare, and all your basic needs taken care of (which I presume will continue to increase as we take care of more needs. Moving goal post) then that is a win. I don't care how high the ladder goes if the lowest rung is post scarcity. If every person can has all their needs taken care of I don't care if there's a few x-airs that have quantum space yachts with holodecks. You don't have to compare yourself to everyone else. Everyone doesn't need to be equal. That's not a requirement to create a post scarcity world where everyone can pursue their dreams without worry of hunger or health. Inflation adjusted, food has become become a lot cheaper over the last hundred years, so at least one of those things is on the right track. What we're talking about would put healthcare on the right track (especially if you're pro single payer). Seems the other ones will similarly decrease in price as they become necessary (again, back to the reactionary nature).
Maybe you disagree though. But as long as there are people, like you, pushing for these things, I have good reason to believe we will obtain them.
As a newcomer, you won't be able to buy a home. Similar to now, there will be many other more wealthy people who want to buy that home "as an investment" so they can keep growing their wealth in relation to their peers.
I already fear we are heading towards economic feudalism. Throw in living forever and I fear something more akin to SLA Industries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLA_Industries
As you say though, with people pushing for things, hopefully significant societal change would avoid such a disastrous future.
edit - more concise.
I’m really sick of people equating working for someone else with slavery.
Big difference going from 50 to 70; proportionally less going from 600 to 700, even if the world isn’t changing in a way that makes recent experience count for more than ancient experience.
A distracting thought: isn't it striking how "real property ownership" has returned as a marker of better societal status? A mere 50-60 years ago, even working class could own (arguably not very nice) dwellings in coastal California etc.
The same development can be seen in Europe.
If I had to choose, I'd rather be an owner of 3-4 nice pieces of real estate than a highly qualified professional. This is a certain return to feudalism, in a sense.
As for your original idea: going from 600 to 700 is not a big deal. But the intermediate phase is going to be a big challenge. The first generation that enjoys the possibility of life extension to, say, 120, is going occupy their positions of power for a disproportionately long time and will need to be persuaded to step away; possibly in exchange for a lot of money.
Yet when we design an economic system by the exact same principle, people wonder why we get ten shrieking megaphones instead of a magical tidal wave.
I don't think the problem with Congress is that members are in their 70s. The problem is that ideally they would have real jobs till their 60s THEN run for government. Instead they bum around various government roles till they get elected in their 30s and once they are there dig in like tics.
Also: "...like tic[-tac-toe]
It makes me wonder if the US system will break down the same way the USSR broke down. As the politicians from the "early days" age out, it's difficult to replace them with people who are similarly bought into the system. And you end up with a Gorbachev or equivalent. I'm not sure if our Gorbachev is an AOC-like or a Trump-like or something else, but it's possible we'll have difficulty filling in the ranks of the Pelosis, Schumers, McConnells, etc.
(Sarcasm)
Edit: I forgot HN does not enjoy sarcasm